Fields v. Commonwealth
Fields v. Commonwealth
Opinion of the Court
Opinion op the Court by
— Dismissing the appeal.
Appellant, Winnie Fields, was indicted, tried and convicted in the Bracken circuit court for unlawfully selling intoxicating liquors and his punishment fixed at a fine of fifty dollars and thirty days ’ imprisonment in the county jail.
On this appeal from the judgment his counsel insists on a number of alleged errors, chief among which is that the indictment is defective and the demurrer filed thereto should have been sustained. If the ease was one of which we had jurisdiction we would have, no trouble in concluding that the record is free from substantial errors and that it reveals no grounds authorizing a reversal of the judgment; hut under the provisions of section 347 of the Criminal Code we have no jurisdiction of this appeal. That section expressly confines our appellate jurisdiction in penal actions and prosecutions for misdemeanors to judgments inflicting a fine of more than-fifty dollars and imprisonment exceeding thirty days, and note 1 to the section cites a number of cases in which the appeal was dismissed where the fine did not exceed fifty dollars or the imprisonment thirty days, some of the latest of which are Noe v. Commonwealth, 134 Ky. 618, and Holcomb v. Commonwealth, 149 Ky. 442, with others cited in those opinions. From them it will be seen that the fact governing the appellate jurisdiction is the amount of the fine or imprisonment actually imposed and not the extent of the punishment which might be imposed for the offense with which defendant was accused.
In the very recent case of Deskins v. Childers, Judge, 195 Ky. 209, the precise question was determined by us in an opinion by Chief Justice Hurt, in which case the
It, therefore, results that we have no jurisdiction of this appeal, and it is accordingly dismissed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.